


Is This More Than You Bargained For Yet?

by Volrosso



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-01 23:07:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Volrosso/pseuds/Volrosso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrick has antlers. Joe is a hunter. The entire town consists of rude, intolerant people who don't like people who are different at all. </p><p>Joe's not one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Is This More Than You Bargained For Yet?

**Author's Note:**

> There's a nice person on tumblr and I figured hey here's for the people who like obscure pairings like me so uh...  
> Another thing that will take me 42 years to finish with another silly cliche song title amen.

Joe does _not_ like Lou-Ann. 

But Lou-Ann really likes Joe. 

Lou-Ann is the kind of girl who is pretty enough to look at sure. But there's nothing going on under all that hair, the gears have stopped completely up there. The lights are all off upstairs, buried under her thick mane of black hair that's never straight in the slightest.

But what she lacks in brains, she makes up with boobs, and she really _does_ have fantastic boobs. You know, if you like boobs. Which Joe _totally does_ , of course. Just not _her_ boobs. Lou-Ann's the kind of girl who wears nothing but plaid shirts and blue jeans and brown cowboy boots and her dad is gruff and serious and takes her hunting even if she can't shoot the side of a barn. 

No, literally. She can't. Joe was forced down there once because Pete didn't want to be left alone with her. She missed the side of the barn. And Joe has no patience for people like that. She talks like she's uppity, smacks her gum and calls Joe 'sweetheart', which he also cannot stand.

And then there's the wonderful fact that Pete just thinks it's funny sometimes to leave Lou-Ann with Joe at inconvenient times. Her and her loud voice and her inability to shoot a gun are irritating, especially because you can't escape anyone in this fucking _hick town,_ and Lou-Ann's always lurking somewhere. If Joe wants a break nowadays, he has to lock himself in his room. 

Well, lock himself in his room or go out hunting. Hunting is nice. Hunting is fun. Joe is good at shooting, he's better than Pete and he's better than Andy (Andy doesn't kill anything though so he doesn't practice like they do) and he's almost better than his dad, who serves to be the sort of unattainable standard of excellence that everyone strives for. 

Joe can hunt birds. Joe can shoot birds _out of the sky_. And Lou-Ann _can't hit the fucking side of a barn_ , like, really? And he's glad she missed in the first place because he and Andy spent the entire summer painting that fucking barn for her father as a way for apologizing for the fact that Pete was sleeping with Lou-Ann's sister and Bailey Connor at the same time. They should both know better.

Besides, Lou-Ann' sister can't even talk okay. She's the village bicycle, even if her Daddy doesn't know about it. And nobody can keep their hands off Pete. _Nobody_.

But what actually kills Joe, what _really_ gets under his skin and makes him want to shoot himself on the spot, is when she shows up when he's working. The way she walks in and smiles, and leans on the counter, sticking her butt out without a care in the world, and Pete or Andy or whoever's there at the time leaves immediately, just to get on Joe's last nerve. When she walks in- nay, _sashays_ in, hips swishing and her jeans fourteen sizes too tight, Joe smacks his head down on the counter and Pete laughs, patting his abundant hair.

"I won't even leave this time," Pete says, like that's supposed to make things better at all. If Pete wanted Joe to feel better, he'd go get rid of Lou-Ann. She's leaning up against the counter, smiling like a siren about to lead him to his death. Alternatively, if there is some sort of failure of a siren that men aren't attracted to and can't lure people to their deaths with their song, that's what she's smiling like.

Joe is less than pleased. He flinches when she smacks her gum, getting a good grip on the counter so he doesn't go over it and throw Pete Wentz at this girl. _Anything_ to make her stop stalking him.

"What can I get you?" Joe grits out, and Lou-Ann has the _audacity_ to giggle at his reluctance to speak with her, because she is _obviously_ god's gift to mankind. She makes a show of making up her mind, so Joe just brings her coffee over, because that's all she ever gets. She is _forever_ wandering in here and trying to get him to talk to her. Lou-Ann seems positively tickled by the fact that he's remembered what she likes, omitting the fact that it's the same thing she gets every time she's in here, and she only comes in when Joe's working. She settles herself down in a stool, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

"What are you doing tonight?" Lou-Ann asks, no formalities, no nothing, just straight to the point. Okay. Joe pretends to be very preoccupied with one of the dinosaur coffee makers, flicking his hair out of his face in an impatient fashion.

"Going hunting," he says simply, ignoring how her face falls slightly. "Pete's coming with me, aren't you, Pete?"

Pete smiles his _Don't-You-Fucking-Drag-Me-Into-This-Trohman_ smile and nods. "Trohman's anal about starting as soon as the season does," he adds, and Joe wanders over to Pete, leaning against the counter. Now he's in on the conversation. Joe is no longer alone. _It is a success._

"S'gonna be awesome," Joe confirms with a curt nod, pouring Pete another cup of coffee and smacking him upside the head when he waggles his eyebrows, which gets him a stern fifteen second lecture from the other girl working the counter about customer service. She should know better. Pete Wentz does not need encouragement.

"He's incorrigible, Lena, don't bother," Pete says, smirking when Joe rolls his eyes. "A menace to society."

"I'll show you a menace to society," Joe grumbles, and he ignores Lena making eyes at Pete and Pete resting his chin on his hand and raising an eyebrow and the fact that Lou-Ann is still staring. Damn it. Joe is very good at ignoring things now, because if you ignore things they will ignore you, and sticking under the radar here is imperative.

He looks around for someone else to talk to, but the diner is unusually quiet for this time in the afternoon, no dice. He is subject to listening to Pete talk about anything and everything to Lena, which was a shame because Joe can tolerate her most of the time, but not if she's staring at Pete-fucking-Wentz like he's the sun in the sky like that, no. Stupid, stupid Pete with his eyeliner and his fingerless gloves and his girl jeans that drive every girl into a euphoric stupor, no seriously. Fuck him. 

Joe needs to make friends with people who are his own age and species, quite honestly. He's been realizing this for a while now. It's become like, imperative. He needs a best friend who's not always off doing something else you wouldn't want to be doing with him to a different girl every other day. But he's got himself convinced that Pete will grow out of his hormones eventually. Hopefully sooner rather than later. 

He snaps back into focus when Lena shakes his shoulder, and everyone is staring at him like he's supposed to answer the question he didn't even hear them ask, so he says "Yes?" 

Immediately, Lou-Ann's face lights up and Pete bursts out laughing. This is obviously the worst possible answer and he will regret it for the rest of his life. "Saturday then?"

"As soon as he wakes up, Lou," Pete snickers, and Joe wonders if going over and punching him in the teeth would be considered poor customer service. Maybe not, but Lena would not be happy. "I'll make sure it happens before summer comes and the winds of change sweep him off to some faraway land." 

"Somewhere preferably faaar away from you," Joe mumbles, and Pete gives him the puppy-dog eyes that he can see right through.

"Baby, you know I didn't mean it."

"Get out of my life, Wentz."

 

 

The only thing that's worse than being at work is being at home. The house is quiet when Joe wanders in smelling like grease and coffee. Or it's quiet except for the gross sounds of his brother and his brother's girlfriend making out quite enthusiastically in the living room.

A yellow sticky note on the fridge proclaims that his father is out, a similar lavender one informing him that his mother has gone to visit a friend and dinner is in the fridge if he gets hungry. So now there's nothing to do but take a shower and hope what's-her-face doesn't stay too long.

Joe doesn't want to have a repeat of Thursday. If the walls aren't thin enough already, he's got the room beside his brother's, which was usually fine. Until the headboard is slamming into the wall and the various other noises start up. Then it's a little less than pleasant. 

The issue now is: No dad, no hunting. Which seems stupid, Joe knows what he's doing and Pete knows what he's doing and neither of them need parental supervision anymore. They're grown men now, damn it. And nobody is going to argue that Joe isn't a good kid, so he can afford some teenage rebellion every once in a while. His brother is otherwise preoccupied anyways, so Joe grabs his gun and heads out the back to Pete's house.

They've done this before, sure, once or twice. Not enough to get caught and grounded for life. When it's just Joe and Pete, it's quick and easy. Into Pete's house, brief hello to his parents, stand awkwardly at the front door and discuss grades and parents and school while Pete dons his ridiculous deerstalker and boots. Pete loves his stupid deerstalker, he loves _all_ of his stupid ridiculous hats. Joe doesn't understand the allure but hey, whatever makes him happy.

The two of them are out crunching through the underbrush an hour later, and it's just starting to get dark. Joe doesn't fancy actually hunting in the dark, but he'll make do. It's peaceful being out here, and Pete is always at least seven times quieter. Or at least, he usually is. Apparently today trekking in the woods makes him feel especially chatty.

"You're gonna have to deal with her sooner or later, Jewfro," he informs Joe, which annoys him slightly. 

"I don't know, I just figured you would at some point, Girl Jeans."

"Hey. Don't start this. Not while I have a loaded weapon." Pete nudges him in the side with an elbow, smirking. Joe knocks over Pete's hat, which he scrambles to catch before it falls.

"Just be quiet, okay? You'll scare the deer off."

Pete finds it in himself to be quiet, but it turns out to be entirely unnecessary. There are no deer in sight. Not a single one. And Joe and Pete are both quite patient but, really? _Really?_   They can do better than this on a bad day. It's late twilight by the time Pete starts losing his patience with the hunt. He can't stay totally focused for hours on end like Joe can, not when he's thinking about all the other things he could be doing instead of marching through the forest full of nothing. Joe really can't focus this long either, he's just extra determined to shoot something today. It's been a long day. The universe owes him this at least.

"I'm just gonna like. Sit here. Until you're done giving up on this fucking futile quest of yours," Pete says impatiently, settling himself down on a log and leaning his rifle down beside him. "So don't get eaten okay?" 

Something about the idea of being alone in the dark scary forest is putting Joe on edge, but he swallows that down and nods. He still has daylight, at least. He'll find Pete again before it gets impossible to see. Joe goes trudging through the bush at a slightly elevated pace.

And okay, maybe it's nicer being alone after all. The sky has turned a rather fetching, dusky shade of purple-fading-to-black, and all around him is a sort of restless quiet that he likes a lot, where the leaves will rustle in the slight breeze every so often, but no car horns or chattering voices will break the calm. Joe is so enjoying his walk that by the time he finally encounters a deer, he's almost forgotten that he'd come out here in the first place to shoot it.

It's almost dark when he sees it, dark enough that the path before him is almost invisible, but Joe sees something move. He scrambles behind a tree, swearing under his breath as the deer lifts its head, just the edges of the antlers and tufts of red fur showing over the crest of the bush it's probably munching on. Joe cocks his gun with a barely audible _click_ , lines up the shot...

The deer isn't moving, it must be pretty preoccupied with its own deer things. Joe considers shooting once to scare it but he's not sure he has enough light to be able to line up another shot. Alas, during his silent contemplation, something goes horribly awry.

Someone _sneezes._

Joe jumps, his finger squeezing the trigger too hard, making the gun go off. Someone screams, and it takes him a second to realize that it wasn't him, and it doesn't sound like Pete. Even so, Pete will come running for him around this time. Someone else is crashing through the underbrush, someone else is running, and the deer is getting away. Suddenly, Joe is very concerned that someone else is going to steal his kill. He _needs_ it. He won't let it go without a fight.

Joe slings his gun over his shoulder and makes a break for it, going as fast as his legs can carry him. It's a stupid idea, admittedly, he can barely see a darned thing and Pete is screaming at him from behind to _slow down_ , to _stop_ , to _let it go and lead them home_ but he can't. Joe can't bring himself let someone else win. Not today.

He's gaining on the deer thief, can hear their frenzied breathing. They sound terrified- they shouldn't be, Joe isn't hard to beat in a fight, and it's not like he's going to be picking one anyways. He just needs them to stop. The silhouette before him is faded and unclear, melding in too often with the surrounding foliage, but from what Joe can tell, he's a bit fitter than his opponent. He keeps running until he's feeling out of breath, calling out for the runner to stop, that he'll get them both hopelessly lost-

The runner stumbles, finally, crashes hard to the ground and slides through the dirt. When it looks like he's going to get up again, Joe practically tackles him. He pins him down, straddling him, shining his pocket flashlight in his face-

The boy hisses and looks away from the harsh, direct beam. His face is a bit on the chubbier side, smudged with dirt an blood and scrapes of all shapes and sizes, some of them new, some of them still bleeding. He's gasping for breath and Joe isn't helping, but Joe refuses to move because he realizes he doesn't know this boy. This is unusual, because he knows everyone, you have to in small towns.

The boy's hair is sticking to his face, to his wet mouth and his sweat-sticky skin and it's a pretty strawberry blonde that Joe is starting to appreciate. His glasses are cracked and falling off, but by far his most interesting feature is the ridiculous pair of deer antlers he seems to have glued to his head. Joe has seen his fair share of idiots in his time. _This takes the cake._

"There are better ways to get yourself killed," Joe informs the boy, yanking hard on one of the antlers to try and loosen it. His entire head moves with it and he yelps, making Joe a bit confused. The boy has gone totally still underneath him, whimpering quietly as Joe probes down the length of the antler, confused by how he can't find where it ends and where the boy's skull begins. "Fucking hell are you like, besties with a makeup artist?"

"Please get off me, you're hurting me," the boy says quietly, wincing when Joe tugs hard on the other antler. They seem to be... stuck. Stuck to his head and unwilling to move. "DON'T PULL, YOU'RE HURTING ME."

"The fuck happened to you, dude?" Joe moves off him carefully, but the boy doesn't budge, just closes his eyes and sighs miserably. His clothes are dirty and torn, he's missing a shoe- there's a large red stain on one side of his jeans, right by his calf. He jerks away when Joe reaches out for him, trying to sit up. "Are you okay-"

"I don't want you touching me!"

"Well whatever, we should get you back-"

The boy slaps Joe's hand away and tries to scoot away from him, but Joe grabs his uninjured leg and holds him there until he stops fighting. The boy is out cold by the time Pete shows up, and everyone is out of the house or asleep by the time they get back to Joe's house.

The boy doesn't have anything on him, no ID or even a wallet, and neither of them have seen him before in their lives, but he's bleeding badly enough to warrant bringing him home. The boy is much more agreeable when he's out. They lay him down on Joe's bedroom floor, assessing the damage.

Pete's deployed the first aid kit from the bathroom cabinet on Joe's bed. He plasters a band-aid to a large scrape on the boy's face, but that's about as much as they can do right now without the chance of making the boy mad when he wakes up. As Pete helpfully points out "His leg is bleeding."

It really _is_ bleeding, and getting a lot worse as time ticks on. Half the boy's pant leg is soaked with red at this point. Joe's green carpet will not survive this unscathed, and that's probably going to irritate him for days. Joe pushes his hands through his hair and tells himself to take deep breaths, giving Pete a look. "Like I couldn't fucking see that?"

"Well what are you going to do about it?" Pete does not work well under pressure. Neither does Joe really, they're both kind of starting to panic. This guy could be dying. Neither of them know what to do about it, outside of what they've seen on T.V or in movies. 

"I'm not a fucking doctor... veterinarian... Whatever." The boy is human right? God, this is _way_ too weird for Joe to deal with when he's sober.  

Apparently it's way too much for Pete to deal with too. "Yeah I was wondering about those antlers like what..."

"I don't know man, can you just deal with it please?"

"We have to take his pants off," Pete says, which Joe has been figuring for a while now, but has been dreading.

What if he wakes up with no pants on and figures the worst? What if he _isn't wearing any underwear?_  Oh god, _so_ many things could go wrong and Joe is feeling queasy. "Can we not take his pants off can we just like..."

"This is going to be a long night isn't it," Pete mumbles, and Joe accepts his fat and scrambles to grab the boy under his arms and pull him up off the floor a bit so Pete can get his pants off.

"Glad I've got you here," Joe says, and Pete snorts. 

 

 

Joe calls in sick to work the next day, mostly because there is an injured boy with antlers tied up in his closet and partially because he doesn't want to deal with Lou-Ann.

At first, he did not see the point of the tying-up but Pete had. "What if he wakes up before you do and kills you in your sleep?" Pete had said, and it had seemed like a good idea at the time so, sure. Joe rolls out of bed in the morning, half awake and unthinking, and he makes the mistake of opening the closet door. The boy falls out, hitting the floor hard, wiggling in his restraints. He's still in his ratty, dirty shirt with his wrists bound behind his back, but his pants are gone, the white bandage around his leg blatantly visible from the hem of his somewhat-bloody boxers. 

"What the FUCK dude?" The boy's voice is way too loud. Hopefully nobody else is home. Joe is wide awake now, stepping back to avoid the thrashing of the boy's antlers as he throws his head from side to side. "THIS IS FUCKED UP, KEEPING PEOPLE IN YOUR CLOSET IS FUCKED UP."

Joe's not really sure how to explain this, and he trips over his words multiple times before managing "I'm sorry! I didn't want you like, killing me or something!"

This was not the appropriate answer. " _YOU_ WERE THE ONE FIRING _YOUR_ FUCKING GUN AT _ME_ AND YOU'RE AFRAID OF _ME?_ "

"You're wearing antlers-"

"THEY ARE _ATTACHED_ TO ME, YOU _ENORMOUS DUMBASS_." The boy stops thrashing and sighs angrily, sinking back into the carpet, leaning his head away so he's not looking at Joe. He's breathing hard now, Joe figures he might be hurt worse than he lets on. He remembers all the stupid remarks he'd made about the antlers before and his face goes red, because of curse the fact that they were attached to the boy's head had never occured to him. 

"...Oh."

"So could you untie me, pretty please?"

"What's your name?" Joe sits down on the edge of his bed so he can see the boy's face, and he doesn't turn away this time, just glares at Joe like he's the human embodiment of cancer. He's all dirty, and Joe figures he should at least give him a chance to wash up at some point. "I'm not untying you until you tell me."

"You're not going to untie me anyways," the boy shoots back, and Joe shrugs. 

"I don't want you running off and re-opening the fucking hole in your leg, sorry. I'm not going to do anything to you."

There's a long silence before he finally gives in, squinting like he's trying to see Joe better than he can. Joe's not sure if they brought his glasses back with them or not. "Patrick."

"Joe. You from around here?"

Patrick snorts at that, Joe senses an eye roll even if he doesn't see one. "Obviously not." 

"What happened to your leg?"

"Some idiot like you, most likely," Patrick says, and that gives Joe pause. He bites his lip and looks at the floor sheepishly.

"Sorry about that."

"Yeah, whatever." Patrick turns his head to the other side so he's facing the wall so he doesn't have to look at Joe anymore. It's too early for this bullshit and Joe has to stop himself from lying back down, rolling over and pretending this whole thing never happened and that there is not an attractive pantsless boy tied up on his floor.

Patrick's boxers are green and they have little reindeer on them. Joe laughed so hard he almost cried when he saw them last night, but they've lost their allure now.

He needs to stop thinking about them though. Joe hops off the bed quickly and claps his hands togetherm feigning an absurd amount of cheerfulness. "Do you need anything? Like, are you hungry? You eat human food right?"

"I'm a fucking human of course I eat human food," Patrick snaps, and he sounds indignant. He looks indignant too, blushing and embarrassed. 

"You don't..." Joe had figured he ate like a deer too, but he might have overestimated how much of Patrick was deer and how much was not. "Okay yeah sorry."

"Yeah whatever."

"I'll get you food." He stepped over Patrick and closed the door behind him, mentally kicking himself over and over for his stupidity as he made his way downstairs.  

A tired looking Pete was standing in the kitchen looking a bit lost, and Joe had totally forgotten he was there, quite honestly. Pete looks kind of like a raccoon, more so than usual, and his shirt appears to be missing. He's leaning against the counter, looking lost and angry all at the same time. "What the fuck are we supposed to do," he says without looking up when Joe walks in. 

"I pacified him," Joe mutters, and Pete laughed humourlessly.

"Oh, _that_ makes it okay, sorry. I didn't fucking sleep last night, there is a _deer boy tied up in your fucking closet_ , but you _pacified_ him so that makes _everything okay_."

"Control your emphasis okay? I can deal with this. Just like, make him a sandwich or something."

"Does he eat human food?"

"I think so yeah. Just uh. Come up when you're ready?"

But Patrick has dozed off again upstairs with his face flat against the carpet. Joe lifts him as carefully as he could (he isn't exactly light either) and arranges him on the floor in his closet. He then fetches the blanket from his bed, settles it over the sleeping boy, and closes the door quietly behind him.

They'd figure this out somehow.  


End file.
